Poem of the Week, by Marianne Kunkel

Homeschooled
– Marianne Kunkel

The Nazis? Learned of them in comic books.
Titanic? Heard of it when I mistook
the film for a rom-com on a cruise ship—
glued to my friend’s TV as she skinny-dipped
with a lawn boy, I wondered what the hell
else my parents wouldn’t tell. Six-by-eight cells,
she later said, scrunching her dripping hair,
inside a jail called Gitmo. Then upstairs
in her dad’s office, she skimmed her fingernail
across a world map: Hiroshima, Trail
of Tears, Darfur. No password locking it,
a laptop on the desk showed us portraits
of Katrina—backpacked men wading in streets,
told too late of disaster. Dead last, like me.